As announced in our last blog entry, we are working diligently to clean up any problem areas in IP.Board 3.0 and to finish up the admin control panel so that we can deliver a beta release of our software to all of our users before the end of this month. Things are taking shape nicely. Rikki has the admin control panel nearly finished and we've cleared out hundreds of bug reports since the previe…
The IP.Board 3.0 preview has been going quite well and we have received some good feedback and ideas for version 3.0 which we have already implemented. This blog entry will outline some of the changes that have been implemented in 3.0 since the preview was made available. Other than the changes listed here there have been lots of minor skin interface improvements and many bug fixes too numerous to…
The IP.Board 3.0 preview has been going very well. Lots of bugs have been reported and, more importantly, fixed already. The feedback we have received has been very valuable and we have already implemented some of the good ideas our customers have presented us. Thanks again! We are now ready to open the preview up to the general public. You can visit the preview at http://ipb3preview.ipslink.com …
We are preparing the first public preview of IP.Board 3.0.0 alpha and look forward to everyone's feedback and help in testing. It is our current plan to preview IP.Board 3.0.0 alpha the second half of next week (around Nov 10 2008 +/- a day or two). As promised, those in the customer group on the IPS forums will receive the preview a bit earlier. Keep an eye on our company blog for updates. The p…
We've been blogging for a while about some of the bigger changes you will see when IP.Board 3 is released. Things like enhanced bbcode management, hooks and plugins, and personal conversations, for example, tend to be a bit more interesting to read than smaller features. However, we wanted to take a moment to discuss some of the other smaller features being added to IP.Board that we haven't talk…
With the upcoming release of IP.Board 3, we will of course be updating our first-party components to be compatible with the new architecture. Releases of IP.Blog, IP.Gallery and IP.Downloads will be available alongside IP.Board 3.0 so that you can update everything at the same time and not have to worry about when your components will be ready. We are working with the community project teams to…
Introduction Administration is an important part of running your site. You need to be able to control your site the way you want to, and you need to be able to do it as quickly as possible. Not everyone has an hour or two to hunt down a setting, after all. Once you start to factor in the fact that other applications (such as IP.Blog, IP.Gallery and IP.Downloads) can integrate into this same ad…
Since IP.Board 2, we've had a "kernel" of classes which IP.Board uses but do not depend on IP.Board to use. A selection of these kernel classes includes DB management, file uploads, emailing, RSS parsing and reading, XML parsing and reading and our proprietry archive format XMLArchive. For example, you could use "classUpload.php" and "classImage.php" in your own modifications or extensions to ha…
We receive requests quite frequently to "add SEO to IPB". This is a very difficult request to quantify and to fulfill. What is SEO? What is wrong with IPB's positioning to search engines presently? What can be done better? We've seen some suggestions over time that make sense, and some we feel would be better left to modifications. While we are not jumping full force into the "SEO" arena …
Brandon blogged a while back about IP.Board's integration points. I wanted to spend a moment discussing the features within IP.Board 3 that all you integrate the board with your website and to create your own network. Member Management Since IP.Board 2, we've had, what we call, "Log In Modules". This is basically a mini-framework to allow custom code to be used easily when authenticating and r…
Around ten years ago, I was hard at work on one of the first 'Private Message' modifications for a board that has long ceased to exist. At the time it was an exciting novelty to be able to message another board member. These days it's an expected feature for any seriously considered forum software. Not much has really changed with messaging's core features. Sure, the interface has become a littl…
As we get further along in the development cycle for IP.Board 3 an obvious step that we will be taking on soon is general testing of the new codebase. While this happens with every release, both internally and publicly, it is even more important for a release as immense as IP.Board 3. The entire underlying codebase has changed and vigorous testing will be needed to iron out all of the issues us …
